Regaining Our Missional Traction
We often assume that gospel stories are the entry level materials of faith – often reserved for children and first believers. This would be wrong. I propose that the greatest instruction for church leaders are held in Jesus’ words. We might want to look at them again through leadership eyes.
#JesusStories: Luke 4 records a day when Jesus walked into a synagogue and asked if they would permit him to do the reading that day from the prophet Isaiah. While all eyes were upon him, he read this prophecy, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He has anointed Me to preach the good news to the poor; He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty all who are oppressed; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.” Then after a long pause while everyones eyes were fixed upon him, he said, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” Wow, I would have love to have been there. This was no normal day at synagogue. It was the formal announcement of something new happening on earth – what Paul called ‘The Day of Salvation’. Jesus made it clear in that moment what the world should expect from him going forward. Isaiah’s forecasted list would now become the repeating ‘Works’ that Jesus would use to birth the inbreaking Kingdom of God upon the earth. I am taken this morning with the line “preach the good news to the poor.” Most preaching today in America is done to the middle and upperclass people who have been listening to scriptural teaching every week for decades. The lower-third of our population is seldom included. Sad but true. Preaching has become an art-form for the ‘already gathered’ to the exclusion of the ‘not yets’. But Isaiah predicted, and Jesus affirmed that preaching to the ‘not-yets’ and the isolated would be a cornerstone of his regular activity. When John’s disciples were sent to ask Jesus if he was really the Messiah, he sent them back to report that the poor are being preached to; that was the only evidence John would need. This is potent information for Christian leaders today. An unexplainable anointing begins to flow upon any ministry and church that finds a way, any way, to preach the good news to the poor and the ‘not yets’ – it changes everything in that church. Here is the truth of it: We too can walk in a new anointing, preach powerfully to the poor, heal those who are broken in all kinds of ways, rescue our neighbors from the strongman’s oppressions, and to make the announcement that there is no time like the present to receive Jesus’ strength in your life. I honestly wonder if recommitting to these ‘Works of Christ’ is the fastest way for any leader, any ministry, or any church to regain their traction?
#DinnerChurchQuotes: “To oppose the gospel of Jesus is like hitting jello with a sledge hammer – it splatters all over the walls in four directions.” -The Anonymous Theologian. (Note: Dinner Churches thrive in the splattering gospel – especially after evil has done its worst to suppress, repress, and oppress)
Blessings upon your work for the frontlines of the Gospel,
Verlon.
Dr. Verlon and Melodee Fosner have led a multi-site Assemblies of God Dinner Church in Seattle, Washington since 1999 (www.CommunityDinners.com). In this decade when more churches in the U.S. are declining than thriving, and when ninety-six churches a week are closing, Verlon and Melodee sensed that a different way of doing church was needed for their 97-year old Seattle congregation. It soon became obvious that they were not the only ones in need of a different path. They joined the FX team in 2016 and founded the Dinner Church Collective. And then in 2019 founded the Dinner Church School of Leadership. There is a lot to be gained when church leaders begin to see open doors in the American landscape that they had previously overlooked. Therein lies the journey for those who will forge a new future for the American Church.
Categories: Uncategorized
09.17.20
By: Josh Gering
It has been my experience, to echo a major point of your post, that when a church commits to preach the gospel to the poor, a river of provision begins to flow. It seems to me that some are apprehensive to preach to the poor because there’s no money in it. Those who come to dinner churches give, but it’s not enough to sustain the meal or pay a preacher. I believe if a step of faith is taken to seek this new congregation that is waiting in a poor neighborhood just down the street, the provision will come to sustain the new dinner church. We cannot base our preaching of the gospel on an audience’s ability to give to support it. This weakens the power of Gospel and Jesus’ fulfillment of Isaiah, the good news is being preached to the poor. I am challenged again, who is waiting on me to bring them this good news about Jesus Christ?
09.18.20
By: michael cox
My favorite passage of scripture is Luke 4:18-19. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Jesus is quoting Isaiah 61:1-2 while omitting the phrase, “The day of vengeance of our God.” The audience may have been hoping for the “fulfilment of Scripture” to include the judgment and destruction of political enemies. We all have a secret list in our hearts entitled “People who deserve the vengeance of the Lord.” This prophetic proclamation of Jesus lets everyone know that “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing (Luke 4:21).” Jesus is anointed to heal the broken hearted and the time is now. The kingdom of Jesus extends God’s grace and mercy to people outside of familiar religious traditions and cultural circles. His healing and hospitality invite hostility. “When they heard these things, all in the synagogue were filled with wrath (Luke 4:28).” Jesus always makes church people mad! Dinner church makes people mad too! Vengeance will have to wait. Jesus has some healing to do.
When Jesus is baptized, he receives approval from his Father. “The heavens opened, and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form, like a dove; and a voice came from heaven, ”You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased (Luke 3:22).” It has taken me a while to believe that I am beloved by God. Through the dinner church I have learned that the kingdom of God is in our midst when the church is among the poor. “God blesses you who are poor, for the Kingdom of God is yours (Luke 6:20).” My prayer Is that the church would find its authority by walking in the anointing of Jesus. The favor of God is good news to the poor.
09.20.20
By: Rodney Martin
What is the good news for the poor that Jesus is quoting from Isaiah in Luke 4? Verlon I think you are touching on an important emphasis that the church often misses when it comes to the poor. In my town many churches began working together to develop a feeding program for families when the schools closed due to the coronavirus pandemic. The hungry having food to eat is certainly good news and an essential ministry of the church. But, something is missing if that’s all we do or emphasize. Has the church become involved with social welfare without the power of the Holy Spirit? Are the poor that we serve through various programs like food pantries and soup kitchens fully welcome to belong in the worshiping community? In my pastoral experience the church finds it easy to “serve” the poor but quite difficult to “be” with the poor. The poor become objects of our social agenda instead of people whom Christ is calling into a relationship of love and belonging. We develop programs to address needs without partnering with the Spirit’s work of healing, delivering and transforming of the person into a new creation. If people are hungry the church needs to feed them. But, the work of the gospel, the good news to the poor continues as an invitation into the transforming work of the Holy Spirit as a member of the Body of Christ.
09.21.20
By: Verlon Fosner
Rodney, it is so true about the difference between helping the poor and being willing to do life with the poor.
09.22.20
By: Roger Bird
We started our church, The Bridge in Allegan, 12 years ago with the mission of being a church for the Beaten Up, the Burned Out, and the Just Plain Bored. We spent our early years as a light weight and (fairly) low maintenance model of the inherited church, meeting first in the high school, then the middle school, and finally the historic Griswold Auditorium in our downtown. We were renegades without the trappings of church and that allowed people who weren’t really too sure about church to trust us enough to come and hear about Jesus.
Then, six years ago, God blessed us with a building which has allowed us to do things we couldn’t do before. Things like having a food pantry, housing Coats for Kids, and hosting recovery meetings and other gatherings. It’s been wonderful expansion, but it has changed us as a ministry. It has made us a more “grown up” and, dare I say it, traditional church. This change has likely made many of the beaten up, burned out, and bored folks that we want to reach, less likely to come through our doors. As a result, in that six years, our numbers on Sunday mornings have declined by 30%. Looking back I can see that our focus has changed. Subtly, our ministry has become more about maintaining a building and managing our Sunday morning meetings, rather than being out in the streets prayer walking or meeting and talking with folks in our local coffee shop or stores.
Realizing this, Alan Hirsch’s speculation that an estimated 60% of the people in north America will NEVER come to a Sunday morning service now matter how cool our building is, no matter how great our worship is, no matter how good the teaching is, is even more sobering.
This means that if we continue to focus only on our more “recognizable” forms of church, as we have been more and more over the last six years, we are conceding that we are OK with never reaching that 60%. But I don’t think that we are OK with that. I know that I am not OK with that. My heart longs to be out in the streets, in the coffee shops, and bars and breweries, in the market place rubbing shoulders with that 60%, earning the right to share the Good News of Jesus with them in a way that they can hear it and receive it.
I want to preach the Good News to the poor again – both the economically poor, and the poor in spirit. I want to bind up the brokenhearted, and proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind. I want to set the oppressed free and proclaim the Seeker’s Gospel of love, grace, and favor to the beloved sought. That is why I am in this Dinner Church School of Leadership
09.22.20
By: JoAnn Bastien
Yes! We have forgotten about the poor and also those who are marginized for other reasons. We have seen people from the LGBTQ community join us out of spiritual hunger. They recognize it is a safe place for them also. We have also discovered that, once we committed to reaching poor and marginized people groups, the provisions came from seemingly out of no where. People have donated prepared foods, gift cards, and money to provide for each dinner church. Our young adults are signing up before anyone else to volunteer.
09.22.20
By: Joshua Smith
About a year and a half ago I started a young adult bible study with the intention of gathering that community that was not present in our Sunday morning worship. In the process of setting up the group meetings, researching, and choosing study guides I unintentionally discovered exactly this. My fellow leaders and I picked a gospel thinking oh gee this will be perfect for younger people unfamiliar with the story of Jesus. Yes it was but we as leaders were convicted by that same group of entry level first believers. As we read Jesus’s words again it was different gathered with new eyes and voices asking us when do we feed the poor? or more specifically, Why does your church not do this? This was when I realized my goal increase our weekly attendance was so wrong. We were so caught up in programming that we missed people actually looking for answers to questions we claimed to have but only if you show up on Sunday. I needed to hear Jesus proclaim that scripture fulfilled, and I needed to hear it in the midst of that group of young adults who were hearing it for the first time.
09.23.20
By: Nicole Fike
Preaching to the poor, broken hearted and oppressed is what every church needs to do now in this post-Christendom era while experiencing a global pandemic as well as a racial pandemic. Step outside the building and listen to the needs of our community. The parking lot is the third largest mission field. In my county the public libraries are closed but still ministering to the community. Several branches have pivoted to drive-thru food distribution. What can the church learn from this? What would happen if the churches especially the dying ones did what their local library is doing? Better yet, what kingdom impact would occur if every church had a dinner church?
09.23.20
By: Rev. Kim DuBreuil
Last Sunday I shared in the sermon how 65% of the United States population hold a secular world view. Numerous members of the congregation were in disbelief of that percentage. They believed it wasn’t possible. So I began to do a little searching on the internet to gather more information on this topic. I read how half of churched adults are not watching online services(due to church doors being locked during Covid-19) and how churches have increased online viewers; only to find out many are just “church hoppers” people jumping around to watch other church services. However, churches are also seeing an opportunity for people to “try out church.” Even some people have felt more comfortable inviting people to church online, because it’s less intimidating, and there are lower expectations. I read how about 14% of non-Christians are actually visiting churches online. [See related articles under the heading of “2020 State of the Church” by the Barna Group at http://www.barna.org].
When I was a young the neighborhood children loved to play “normal” games, one favorite was “kick the can.” You’d hide and when you were found you’d run and “kick the can” before you were caught. Every now and then we changed the rules. Sometimes those changes resulted in someone being left out, or someone got hurt, or it just wasn’t the “way we’ve always done things.” Yet, at other times we’d change the rules so much that it led to the creation of a whole new game. I just love how Jesus came into the game of life and stirred up what was viewed by the religious insiders as “normal.” Yet Jesus didn’t just change a few rules in a traditional game; Jesus created a whole new game that was out of the norm.
I’d would like to think that a new world view opportunity is in our midst, nothing is “normal” anymore, so let’s lead other’s into a new way that resembles Christ’s way. Let’s put aside those weary and sobering statistics that make us say, “no that can’t be possible.” Let’s get back to identifying the “poor” in ____ (fill in the blank) among us. Let’s seek that lower third we refuse to see. Let’s open new doors, different doors, and create a new game plan! Maybe we might need to “kick the can” to someplace new.
09.28.20
By: Rachel Reinink
Such a good word.
A little over a year ago our team launched church out of a house in a rural area. We meet on Tuesday nights. We eat dinner together, give thanks, and pray. I kept feeling pressure to offer the “Sunday morning experience” but just couldn’t do it. People kept saying we weren’t a “real” church, or that they hope someday our church will come to fruition. Then… Covid came. In an instant, the world shifted. What once seemed crazy in that community is now the way we can still BE community.
I have had to, and will continue to, defend the dinner church model to the church’d. But that’s ok. The Holy Spirit has given us a call to meet people at the table…and its our job to set it.
09.29.20
By: Shawn Rutaqn
There is a longing in the spirit of the church to get back on track. We just got so far off course we are having a hard time seeing the way. God is raising up a movement of Hiking guides who know the way back and have the strength to guide the church back. The Dinner Church is one such guide. Lord may we be led back to the right path!
10.1.20
By: Marion Sortore
“An unexplainable anointing begins to flow upon any ministry and church that finds a way, any way, to preach the good news to the poor and the ‘not yets’ – it changes everything in that church.” That anointing is one of the most powerful persuaders/mediators/intervenors that I have ever witnessed. The prior church I served was coasting – mmmm, no they were slowly oozing into the sunset. Once dinner church started – everything changed! Everything! Those on fire for with the Holy Spirit were volunteering and sitting at tables with people they have lived in the town with their entire lives…but neither knew the other existed. And I do have to say that those who were vulnerable to pride, ‘the way we’ve always done it”, fear of change, and temptation left the door open for Satan – and there was some Spiritual warfare that went on. However, it is that anointing that fans the flames of hope in my spirit as I begin to live into a new community, a new state, and new relationships.
10.18.20
By: Gareth phillips
Great thoughts Verlon, such powerful thoughts that challenge me to the core. I say this because when I first recommitted my life to God in my mid-late twenties, I had such a heart for the poor, it seemed to overflow from the heart and spirits compulsion. This God-given passion meant I postured myself to seeking these people out in the gatherings, working with a homeless shelter, and so on.
In the last 5 years I have vision of doing a cafe, but this word is definitely, making me think, the reason being, I have kind of justified in my mind a new outlook. I feel compelled to set up a cafe church (dinner included!!), however, if I am honest, I imagine doing this with an emphasis on seeking and reaching ‘hipsters’. You know the kinds, with the best coffee south of London. I mean I want to use their money, and give it to initiatives and seek out justice, however, I need to think again, because I am not sure if I considered doing life with the poor, and that is shameful. I know I am empathetic, but as you said Verlon perhaps my vision to reach the young middle class, will not be as glorious if it excludes the ‘not yet’s’.
If Jesus started his Kingdom message echoing Isaiah’s mandate to reach the poor, through phsically and practically, proclaiming good news to the poor, then it must be my focus to. Christian communion / dinner is a ‘type’ forshadow of the wedding feast in the ‘new heavens and new earth’ and on that note we need to try daily in our communities to remember not only Christ, but remember to be like him. I think that is the essence of communion, to remember him, by obeying him. Jesus did say “But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind,'”.
I think my vision to host and disciple ‘hipsters’ is still valid, but denies them the discipling of Jesus without their shared place at a table which includes and prioritises the poor and broken.
Thats what will make it truly hipster.
What a glorious message – He has anointed Me to preach the good news to the poor; He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty all who are oppressed; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”
Thanks Verlon